Volha Chykina
Volha Chykina, Ph.D. Marquette University

Schroeder Complex, 113H

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America

Associate Professor

Educational Policy and Leadership

Volha Chykina is an associate professor in the School of Education at Marquette University. Dr. Chykina researches how politics shapes education. Harold Lasswell famously defined politics as a fight over ‘who gets what, when, and how’, and Dr. Chykina’s work focuses on where these distributional concerns intersect with education, often determining who gets to study or say what, when, and how, and who gets to succeed.

Dr. Chykina’s early work centers on the relationship between educational policy, local politics, and public attitudes and how these factors affect educational equity and student outcomes. This line of research focuses on primary and secondary education and investigates which features of educational systems, as well as which political and social conditions, generate the most positive outcomes for all students, and especially those from marginalized backgrounds.

More recently, Dr. Chykina’s work has shifted to higher education while retaining its central focus on the relationship between politics and educational opportunity. One strand of this research examines American university commitments to human rights and inclusivity, and how these commitments influence student outcomes. Another strand centers on academic freedom, investigating how political developments influence its protection and why it matters for universities, scientific progress, and democratic societies. To address these questions, Dr. Chykina uses a range of quantitative methods, from social network analysis to conjoint experiments, develops new measures, and leverages both subnational data from the United States and cross-national data.

Prior to joining Marquette, Dr. Chykina was faculty at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond and a postdoctoral associate at the Donia Human Rights Center at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Chykina’s work can be found on her Google Scholar page. 

Education

  • Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, Educational Theory and Policy | Comparative and International Education
  • M.Ed., DePaul University, Educational Leadership
  • B.A., Minsk State Linguistic University, Secondary Education, Foreign Language Instruction

Research Interests

  • Education and Politics
  • Educational Inequality
  • Comparative and International Education